


red rock

by bombcollar



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: DLC Spoilers, Family Fluff, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epilogue to black dog. Leslie experiences life with Sebastian after their escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red rock

**Author's Note:**

> I've been picking at this for a while. I wanted to write something from Leslie's POV in the same style as black dog. 
> 
> Warning for brief mentions of forcefeeding and gore.

It takes a very long time to get to the desert. Much of it you sleep through, lulled by the rumble of the car and the monotonous scenery. Fields rush past broken by billboards you often can’t read. They seem to be blurred out, like the faces of people on TV who didn’t want to be seen, but you catch words on them sometimes. JESUS IS COMING. PRAY FOR US SINNERS.

You think you know who Jesus is, but whether the name was one you heard yourself or something still stuck inside your skull from your time in the machine is muddy. You remember people standing with their heads bowed. Candles sputtering and shadows moving like living things. Murmured words made hollow by a large and echoey space. A feeling of anger and deep disgust so strong it makes you sick to your stomach. You don’t want this Jesus to come back from wherever he is.

* * *

 Seb only stops at night if he can help it. One service plaza is in the middle of nowhere, with corn on all sides like a whispering sea. He stands and looks at it, frowning. The cigarette he holds glows like a monster’s single baleful eye. _I didn’t think they started growing it this early out here._

Later you’ll wonder if it was just a dream. The rest stops were like that. Late at night, nobody looked at you, or if they did they seemed to look right through. Maybe they thought you were a ghost. It was better if they did. You understand that it is better not to be seen for real.

* * *

You stay in the car until Seb comes out of the little store. He said he was getting something to help you hide better, to help keep the people who want to hurt you from finding you. You look too different, and people will notice.

You stand over the sink in the motel bathroom that smells of stale cigarettes and disinfectant, the same sharp smell as the hospital, and fight the urge to vomit as Seb rubs the paste in your hair. It stinks too but not like the disinfectant and you squeeze your eyes shut and grip the cold dirty porcelain and when he’s done you look different. Your hair isn’t white anymore. It’s dark brown, like his. Even your eyebrows. _That’s about the best we can do for now,_  he says. He helps you dry off and he looks very tired when he smiles at you, but you know you can’t stay here for long. You have to keep going.

* * *

The car passes fields of tall white windmills, just a line and three lines, four lines, so easy you could draw it. They all spin in unison. It doesn’t seem real. Nothing in the desert seems real. Like the movies they would show projected on the dirty white wall of the cafeteria while you all sat on the benches or the cold linoleum, you and the patients who were good at being quiet. Most of the time you fell asleep before it was over.

* * *

 Even as you arrive in the blue-tinted early morning, the air is hot, and the colors of the rocks you saw through the window and your sunglasses are so brilliant you can’t look at them right away. It hurts but it’s a good hurt, not like the hurt of harsh white lights in the examination room that they shone in your eyes as they gripped your chin and forced you to keep your head in place.

Seb says he has a place for the both of you to stay, but you don’t answer. The worlds wants to pull away from under your feet and before it can you shuffle back to Seb and press your face to his chest and stay there with his arms around you until you feel like it will keep steady.

* * *

In the sun, hot and unrelenting, so much so that you don’t dare let it linger on your fair skin for more than a minute or so, you can forget the chilly gray stone and metal, the freezing wet viscera you slopped through ankle-deep. You can forget the sound of pounding footsteps, of screams, yours and others, of fingers digging their ragged nails into your brain. For a while you can. Seb says you’re up high here, close to the sun, that you’ll need to be careful or you’ll get burned.

Most of the time you remain in the apartment. Going outside takes preparation. Despite the heat you have to wear long sleeves. It helps to hide the scars and track marks of dozens of carelessly-placed IV needles. The sun lotion is what takes the longest, but you don’t mind. You like the feeling of his gentle hands on your back and shoulders, but you can’t help but notice how he avoids lingering on the scar at the base of your neck, where you were connected to the machine. You know he has one too, not as obvious as yours. He was only plugged in once.

* * *

One day when Seb is out you find a spider in your room. It is large and brown and white and covered in fur, and when you let it climb into your hand it is so, so gentle. You let it sit on your shoulder as you read and watch the hummingbirds have their tiny bird fights and wait for Sebastian to come home.

_You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days, Les,_  Sebastian tells you when he gets home, after he’s calmed down a little. He doesn’t want you to keep the spider (which you found out is called a Blonde Tarantula. It was in a book he got you on the animals that lived in the desert here) but you know the Blond Tarantula is important to have. It came to you. He says that the spider can still be your friend even if it lives outside. Outside is where it belongs, just like you did not belong locked up in Beacon.

You understand, and you let the spider go in the backyard. To be kept somewhere you don’t belong is a terrible thing, and you don’t want it for the spider, which did nothing wrong, no more than you did.

* * *

There is only so much time. You can see that, you can count the pills in their orange bottles, and even if you can’t, you know there are only so many. There are lots right now, but nothing lasts forever. You can’t go back to the old doctor. You drove miles and miles and now Sebastian calls you by a new name when you’re outside, you can’t be Leslie to anybody but him anymore. You can’t have Leslie’s problems and you can’t have Leslie’s medicine. What happens when you run out? Who were you, before the hospital? Before the medicine and tests began? Can you go back to that? To how it was with your mom and dad? You can’t remember what that was like. Maybe if you find them again, you’ll remember.

* * *

Seb tells you he’s found a job, but unlike last time there is no group for you to stay with while he’s gone. You have to stay in the apartment. Even though you’re not supposed to go outside for long, sometimes you do, so you can be in the hot sun and see the mule deer that sometimes cross the scrubby backyard. You put your hands and face and the rest of your body on the sun-warmed rock. There is a single chunk of it in the middle of the small space, standing like a banded monolith. Some places on it are smooth and you touch them and imagine other people have been here and touched the rock and it is less lonely somehow.

You still have nightmares, but when you wake up you forget them.

* * *

When you go out you hold his hand too tight and stare at your shuffling feet and though he tells you not to be nervous, you know he is nervous too by his damp palms and the way his free hand goes to his side, though he has no gun there any longer.

The dry air gives you a nosebleed and you cry because it reminds you of the tubes they shoved down your nose when you wouldn’t eat even though you know it’s not the same, but the blood is everywhere all over your hands and shirt and people are looking at you now. Seb’s arms can’t hide you, even you know that, but he holds you anyway and now there’s blood on him too.

* * *

It’s hard to think of Sebastian as your dad, even though he is. The paper you got says so, and he says so, and he holds you gently and brushes your hair and makes sure you eat enough. He calls you son when you’re out somewhere that isn’t home, but at home he just calls you Leslie.

You had another dad, and a mother. Other fingers on your delicate little shoulderblades and vertebrae, on your face so gentle, like the velvet toes of the spider. Telling you to be careful, to stay out of the sun. Telling you they loved you in not so many words. And then, very suddenly, it had been cold metal bed frames and stained sheets and injections, and either harsh white light or darkness. It’s hard to find point B from point A but you can manage it for now. Until the medicine runs out and then you’ll have to face what you were before, if there’s any of it left. Any of the child who smiled at the sun even though he was supposed to turn his face away.

There was Doctor Valerio, who was big and spoke softly and bit his nails too short, and who could not help you as much as he tried. That is another point, between A and B, with no letter, just like how Valerio was in the dream without being in the tub. Maybe built from your memories and from Doctor Marcelo’s, made into a monster with half his scalp hanging limp and red against his cheek and his bloody teeth bared. Was he still alive in the real world? You would like to see him again and show him how much better you are, but you know you can’t do that. You have to be hidden.

* * *

The couch in your apartment is newer, not saggy in the middle and smelling of smoke. There’s blood on it though, lots of it, dark and sticky and you can’t clean it up in time and you’re crying with your face pressed into a pillow when Seb comes home. It hasn’t happened in so long, so long you thought it would never happen again, like maybe they made it stop happening in the hospital so it would be one less thing for them to have to clean off of you.

Seb kisses your forehead and hugs you tight and he’s smiling and he says it’s a good thing, it’s good, you’re getting better. He helps you clean it up and gets you new clothes, helps you dress because your fingers are shaking too much. You don’t understand how blood can ever be a good thing, but you trust him.

* * *

He leaves while you’re still asleep, and when you wake up there is somebody else in the apartment. A lady. She sits neatly on the couch, wearing a suit. She has light hair and dark eyes and she’s smiling like she’s happy to see you.

_Hello Leslie_ , she says.

_Hello_ , you repeat. Your heart flutters in your chest like a bird in a too-small cage.  _Where’s Seb?_

_He’ll be back soon. Why don’t you come sit with me?_ She pats the cushion next to her. You don’t go to her just yet. She continues as if she doesn’t mind. Her eyes briefly light on the bracelet you still wear. The beads that make your racing thoughts settle when you roll them over your skin, cool and hard. _My name is Myra. I’ve been looking for the both of you for a long time._

_Myra...?_  That was _her_. That was _her_ name. You start to reach out and then pull your hands to your chest. As if she might run, might leave before Seb came home, and you would have to hold onto her to keep her there. _Myra..._

_Yes. Don’t worry, Leslie. Everything will be okay. I’m so glad I’ve found you both. Please, sit down._

This time you do sit, your heart beating so fast in your ears it makes you woozy. She was here. She found you and Seb will come home and he’ll be happy because Myra is here, and if you found her maybe you can find your mom and dad, and all of you, all of you can be happy.

She smiles again, takes your hand. Her fingers are soft. The nails are painted red. _I’m so glad you’re safe_ , she says.

And you’re glad too.

 

 


End file.
